


We've Got Tonight

by thecat_13145



Category: The Invaders - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:30:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecat_13145/pseuds/thecat_13145
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Last night before Roger ships out under Brian's old alias of The Destroyer</p>
            </blockquote>





	We've Got Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who don't know what Destroyer looks like  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Concentration camps were first used by the British during the Boer War (1899- 1902) (Winston Churchill was actually in charge of one for a short time). How widely thier use was known at the time, I don't know, but I decided that Brian did

The costume had being designed for practicality, as much as anything else.

The trousers were the ones they issued to prisoners at the camps, dyed red with Madder roots, and reinforced with boiled leather. The boots, he had found near the edge of the camp, taken from a dead man and thrown out because the third Reich could see no need for such perverted items. The top half was leather, covered with the same woollen cloth that was used for the officer’s coats, and padded with whatever he could get his hands on. The mask was a metal helmet with a Bakelite and rubber covering. The gloves he had found in the same place as the boots, undoubtedly discarded for the same reasons.

Looking back, Brian Falsworth found it hard to say what exactly had processed him to design the wretched thing. He had had absolutely every intention of avenging Schmitt and the others he had lost, but what exactly had processed him to do it in an outfit more suited to the circus than to war was beyond him.

Perhaps it had been the local resistance. Weak, demoralised and more focused on eking out an existence than shooting Nazis. Certainly, they had no interest in the fate of those in the camp on the hill, other than avoiding it being their own faith.

He couldn’t blame them. Trapped in the heart of central Germany, with war raging around them for nearly 2 years, and having witnessed the success of Blitlziten…No, Brian Falsworth didn’t blame them for losing hope.

He had stayed with them for just two days, enough to realise that they weren’t without sprit, they just lacked hope, and then he had slipped away.

He was sure that the resistance thought that he had abandoned them, heading cross country to neutral Switzerland or Spain and from there back to his homeland, but he couldn’t do that.

 

Instead, he had spent three nights savaging enough to put the costume together.

He’d like to say he was thinking of his father, and of the tradition of Union Jack, but the truth is he doesn’t know what he was thinking.

Staring at his lover in the costume, Brian wasn’t sure he had been.

“Well?” Roger asked, pulling down the mask of the altered costume and putting his hands on his hip with his chin thrust forward. “What do you think?”

All Brian could think about was that the Skull on the chest rested just above the heart. One of the survivors of the camp had painted it on him, when they first heard Rumours of the Red Skull.

“They have a red skull, we have a white skull.” He had said, but the name hadn’t stuck. Instead the one he chose for himself, “Destroyer” had done so.

A Nazi would shoot, aiming for that Skull, and even the new compound the Americans were using for their costumes would only offer so much protection.

“I think it’s very bright.”

“Don’t the Americans say that’s the idea?” Roger moved towards him. The mask over his face looked like some demented hobgoblin. “Besides you designed it!”

“A decision I am starting to regret.”

Roger’s face contorted, pushing the mask back from his face. “Yeah? Well I’m wishing your dad never came up with that bloody costume!”

He sat down on the bed, turning his back to Brian.

“Roger, that’s…” Brian swallowed, glancing to the chair where the Union Jack Uniform lay. Even in the half light of the room, he can understand what Roger is saying. It is very bright.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He crawled along the bed, wrapping his around the smaller man. “I thought they’d killed you.” He whispered softly.

It was the truth, strange as it sounds. He’d never thought, never dared hope that Roger had survived. He hadn’t let himself think. He had to survive to get out of the camp. Roger had been the name on his lips with every battle, but he never thought, never considered the possibility that the other man was alive.

“I can’t lose you again.”

But that’s a lie and they both know it. Tomorrow Brian takes what his father keeps insisting is his “rightful place” in the Invaders. Tomorrow, Roger flies out to behind the enemy’s lines, to keep the Destroyer legend alive.

Tonight, they’re relative safe in Falsworth Manor. Jackie is in her room down the landing, probably wrapped up in the blanket their mother made her when she was born. His father is asleep in the main bedroom, sleeping in the same bed that generations of Falsworths have been conceived, slept and died in. The young lads, introduced as Bucky and Toro, are asleep in the nursery, their older teammates are sleeping in guest bedrooms. Hotchkins is asleep in the attic.

Tonight, everything is as it should be. Tonight, he could forget what they are facing.

But he can’t, and more importantly, he shouldn’t. He needs to tell Roger, to warn him, but he can’t find the words, even though he knows them.

But the words, mass murder, massacre, even the name of the places, concentration camps, seem small, too small to describe what’s happening. If he told Roger about the mass graves in the woods, about the piles of hair, suitcases, clothes, toys, the other man wouldn’t believe him, or wouldn’t understand.

He thinks of his Uncle, Brian Bantock, for whom he was named, who died when he was three. Brian Bantock, whose mind had been destroyed by the War in Africa, nearly thirty years before Brian was born, the war where those places would be named for the first time.

In spite of the warmth of the night, and of Roger’s body pressed against him, Brian shivers. He feels some days that he’s barely hanging on to his sanity, and he was focusing on surviving that place. Being a part of it…

He closes his eyes and forces the images of skeletal bodies out of his mind.

They have tonight. He has to make it count.

“Just remember.” He says, forcing the words out. “Whatever happens, whatever you see over there, I’m here and I can…I want to understand, and I…and l love you.”

“I know that, Brian.” Roger’s eyes stared up through the mask like some goblin’s. But they were Roger’s eyes, blue and confused. He can tell the other man is staining at the bit to ask what happened, in the same way he wants to ask Roger about the Crusaders, otherwise known as “the thing no one is talking about”, but he can’t. “And I love you too.” He kissed the other man. “Still think that costume is too bright.”

Brian shrugged. “I’m standing next to Captain America, representing King and Country. Can’t let his majesty be shown up by a Yank in his pyjamas.”

Roger laughed. “I thought it was a circus costume.”

“That’s Toro.”

They laughed softly.

“Just…” Roger’s voice was husky. He stared ahead and Brian followed his glaze. Outside his window are the grounds of Falsworth manor, the Elizabethan herb garden his mother planted, the orchard where he and Jackie climbed tree, the lake where he and Roger kissed the last time they were in England. “Come back safe.”

“You too.” He muttered, kissing the other man’s head. “Or I’ll bloody well go to hell and drag you back.” He wants to stare out of the window at the garden below, grey and silver in the moonlight, but the blackout curtains are up. “Come back safely.”


End file.
